Abstract

Detecting Bacteremia by the Beside

Shalini Gupta, Associate Professor, IIT Delhi

Bloodstream infections carry bacterial populations at abysmally low concentrations. Isolation, detection and enumeration of these pathogens or their cell-specific biomarkers at an early stage is an open challenge that can dramatically alter the way antibiotics are currently clinically administered worldwide. This can in turn bring down mortality rates, medical costs and the grave antimicrobial resistance burden facing the society today. I will discuss some strategies used by my group to tackle this issue of low cell concentration in blood that are typically not picked up by the conventional plating methods, while keeping the design of the bioassays simple, robust and cost-effective. More specifically, I will discuss about the use of spatially varying electric and magnetic fields for the efficient capture and manipulation of whole bacteria and a novel point-of-care method for rapid septicemia diagnosis by the bedside.